Tesla Profits, Health Care Algorithm Bias, and More News

A man walks on a factory roof
Photograph: Imaginechina/AP

Tesla looks to Shanghai and Joker fans head to the Bronx, but first, today's cartoon: What's rarer than a unicorn?



Today’s Headlines

Tesla turns a profit—and builds a Chinese factory very fast

Good news out of the Gigafactory: Tesla is back in black. On Wednesday, the electric carmaker announced a positive net profit in its quarterly report, the first record of earnings for the company since the end of 2018. What's more is that Tesla says it has finished building its Shanghai Gigafactory, which took a head-spinning 168 working days to construct. The Shanghai arm will ultimately produce 150,000 cars in a year, thanks to the site's "massive" stamping machines and paint shop.

A health care algorithm offered less care to black patients

New research reveals that the algorithm-ruled software providing care for tens of millions of people privileges white patients over black patients. Records from a major US hospital revealed that the algorithm (when used effectively) lets whites cut in line for programs for chronic conditions such diabetes or kidney problems. This segregation also applied to access to certain nursing teams and hospital visits. The paper, published Thursday in Science, does not reveal the company behind the algorithm.

'Joker Stairs’ and the problem with meme tourism

Everyone's doing it: Fans of Joker are flocking to the infamous set of stairs—now dubbed the "Joker Stairs"—in the Bronx where Joaquin Phoenix’s titular character flails (er, dances) in one scene. Bronx residents—including US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and late-night comedy duo Desus and Mero—are not so happy about it. Joker wannabes are flooding the area, barely getting out of their Ubers to take a picture and abruptly leave. As staff writer Emma Grey Ellis reports: "Memes are always out of context, a snapshot of a moment in time designed to be remixed and reappropriated and mutated by participants in internet culture around the globe. That gets messy when people start putting the meme back into context, by, say, reenacting it in the same location."

Fast Fact: 2.8 Billion

That's how much Avengers: Endgame raked in in ticket sales; the film currently holds the record for the highest international box office total ever. Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker outperformed all other Star Wars films in first-day presales but came in shy of beating Avengers.

WIRED Recommends: Amazon Echo Dot

Make some noise without breaking the bank. The 3rd generation Echo Dot is Amazon's most popular smart speaker and, right now, it's only $9. Don't be fooled by its teeny size, the Dot is loud enough to cut through the noise so you can still listen to, say, Vagabon's new album.

News You Can Use

Google Brain is teaching machines to smell. In a paper released on Thursday, the team announced they trained a set of machine-learning algorithms to predict what a molecule would smell like based on its structure.
